


Five Senses

by msred



Series: Lessons [7]
Category: American (US) Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Accidents, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Dick Pics, Established Relationship, Eventual Smut, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, Masturbation, Nude Photos, Phone Sex, Social Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:28:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29713731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: His stomach, followed quickly by his heart, sinks through the floor when Scott alerts him to what he’s done. See? This is why he never wanted to get this fucking app in the first place. He’d known that the larger his social media presence grew, the more chance there was that something would go wrong. And what about her? She is, well, she’s everything, at this point. It’s been a little over a year now that they’ve been officially together, and that's either a long time or nothing at all, depending on how you look at it. In that time he’s fallen so completely in love with her that he’s almost physically ill right now thinking about all the ways this could hurt her, could destroy them.
Relationships: Chris Evans (Actor) & Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Lessons [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019040
Comments: 32
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

**_September 2020_ **

His stomach, followed quickly by his heart, sinks through the floor when Scott alerts him to what he’s done. See? This is why he never wanted to get this fucking app in the first place. Well, not this _exactly_ , he certainly hadn’t foreseen this exact situation, but he’d known that the larger his social media presence grew, the more chance there was that something would go wrong. And now it has. This never happened when all he had was Twitter, alternating between pictures of Dodger, (intentionally) embarrassing anecdotes about or pictures of himself, and railing against Trump and other political dick head-ery.

It’s not even the fact that he’d accidentally shared the intimate picture of himself, honestly. Considering he’s willingly shown, well, every part of his body except that one, on film, it’s really not that big of a deal. Sure, people will _make_ a big deal out of it. When someone has a nude scene on film, there might be some giggling and blushing, but overall it’s just not a thing, but when it happens without someone’s consent, or, in his case, _intent_ , suddenly it’s headline-worthy. So yeah, the supposed ‘scandal’ of it all will be annoying for a bit. But honestly? It’s the other stupid shit in the camera roll at the time, stuff his brother and his high school buddies like to send him now and then to make sure he doesn’t go getting a big head (no pun intended) over all the praise he gets, that’s actually the more embarrassing thing. Even that, though, isn’t that big a deal to him.

What’s really, really bothering him, as he sits and stares at the floor between his knees, one of them jostling quickly up and down, from where he’s just barely perched on the edge of the couch, is that this fuck-up doesn’t just affect him, the way it would have a couple years ago. That he could have been okay with. He’s never been one to be precious about his own reputation or ego, and so this wouldn’t be devastating if that’s all that was at stake. But it’s not. Because he’s not just an actor now, he’s got ASP to worry about, and while he may not care about his reputation and whether people think differently of him because of a nude photo (have you seen some of his early 2000s photoshoots? Those honestly seem worse than this), he does care if this makes him seem less responsible, less serious, in a way that will hurt the project. This project is important, not just for him, but, he believes, for a lot of Americans out there who can benefit from something like this, something direct and straightforward and that makes them feel connected to the people and the issues they’re voting on. If he loses his access to those people because of this, then every user of ASP loses their access as well. And that would devastate him.

And, to top it off, he’s got Her to think about, and in a lot of ways, that’s the thing he’s most concerned about. Because he can step away from ASP if he has to. He doesn’t _want_ to; this project has been his passion, his baby, for a few years now. But that’s exactly why he will let it go if that’s what it will take for it to survive. Mark and Joe can keep it going without him if he’s made himself so unmarketable that his continued involvement will hurt the project. He really, really hopes it doesn’t come to that, but he’ll do whatever needs to be done because the project is bigger than him. But Her? He can’t just walk away. She is, well, she’s everything, at this point. It’s been a little over a year now that they’ve been officially together, and that's either a long time or nothing at all, depending on how you look at it. In that time he’s fallen so completely in love with her that he’s almost physically ill right now thinking about all the ways this could hurt her, could destroy _them_.

His eyes dart back to his phone, lying haphazardly where he'd tossed it on the coffee table in front of him. He’s terrified to pick it up and call her. If she hasn’t seen it, if she doesn’t know what a colossal fuck-up he just made, calling her is just going to throw her a huge curveball that she did nothing to deserve. But on the other hand, there’s a very good chance she _has_ seen it. She has alerts turned on for his posts, so depending on what she’s doing and how handy her phone is, she may very well have seen it the second it went up. And if that’s the case, the longer he waits to call her and talk about it, the worse things are going to get.

Taking a long, deep breath to steady himself (in for four, hold for four, out for four), he grabs his phone, pausing just a second to look at her laughing face, Dodger’s tongue lapping at her neck and jaw, on the wallpaper, and pulls up her contact, pressing the call button before he can think enough about it to stop himself.

“Hey you!” The joy in her voice is unmistakable. Normally he loves that, loves that he can still make her feel that way a year and a half in with just a simple phone call. Right now it just makes him feel guilty as fuck.

“Have you been online?” he blurts out, unable to think of any way to do this gently. 

She can obviously tell something is wrong on his end, because she’s unsteady when she says, “I, uh, I’m grading papers, so I’m in my online gradebook.”

“But not Instagram, Twitter?”

“Not in a while.” He can hear her shuffling said papers, tapping a stack of them against the desk, or the kitchen table. “I was trying to get this stuff done by lunch so I turned off all my notifications except phone calls. Why, what’s up?”

He exhales and the breath stutters over the lump in his throat. “I fucked up, baby,” he tells her, his voice shaking and his hand coming up to scrub over his closely shorn hair, blunt nails scraping over his scalp. “I fucked up and I’m so sorry.”

She feels like the breath has been knocked out of her. She doesn’t know exactly what he means, but she knows it’s not good. She props her elbows on the table in front of her on either side of her laptop and presses the phone against the side of her head with one hand, the other curled around her forehead and holding the weight of her head. There hasn’t been a moment when she didn’t trust Chris implicitly; this relationship wouldn’t have made it past the first date if that weren’t true. (Even back in the summer, with that whole mess when he was in London, she’d known about every supposedly scandalous meeting before it had happened, and the night that he was supposed to have spent in a hotel room with a certain British actress, if the tabloids were to be believed, he’d actually spent in his bed - alone - watching the newest episode of Hassan Minhaj’s _Patriot Act_ on Netflix with her via Skype then talking to her until he was falling asleep. She’d given him plenty of shit over the fact that he'd been photographed in public without a mask, and had even gone so far as to demand that he socially distanced himself from her for the first couple days he was back, until he got a negative Covid test, just to be a brat, but she knew she had nothing else to be mad about from that trip.) He’s a good man. A kind, respectful man. It’s not that she thinks he would never desire anyone other than her, it’s just that she believes he wouldn’t be dishonest about it, wouldn’t be unfaithful. If he ever stopped wanting to be with her, stopped caring for her, or just started wanting someone else more, he would do the kind thing and tell her so. 

But the way he’s talking and acting now, well, something happened. Something bad. He just said so himself. And she hates herself, a little, for even considering that it might have been that. But she doesn’t know what else to think. And, she doesn’t know, maybe all that time they spent together over the summer before she had to come back home lulled them both into some false sense of security and now that he’s been alone again for a few weeks, well, who knows. She doesn’t want to believe that he would have - that he _could_ have - been unfaithful, and, if pressed, she would have to say that she doesn’t believe it, even now. She just, she can’t imagine what else he might be referring to when he says he fucked up. “I …” she manages to get out, then has to clear her throat, because she can’t let herself cry, she won’t. So she steels herself the best she can and says, rather bluntly, “Chris, I don’t want to sound like a bitch here, but I need you to just tell me what you’re saying.”

Chris mutters a curse under his breath and drops his hand from the back of his head to his thigh. His body slumps, his shoulders then the back of his head hitting the back couch cushions. He’s actually, somehow, managed to make this even worse than it already was, and he hasn’t even told her yet what he did. “Right, no, I’m sorry. Okay, you know how I posted that old video the other day on Instagram, the jumping.” She hums in affirmation and he goes on. “Well, I got sucked into a rabbit hole of old videos and pictures and stuff, and there was a video of family game night. And it was funny. So I posted it.” The closer he gets to telling her, the faster the words rush out. “But I didn’t realize at the time that the end of the video flipped back to my camera roll, and there was a picture there, one I took for you, in Mexico, before I knew you didn’t like them.” He squeezes his eyes shut and brings his hand up to press his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. 

The room stops spinning then seems to fall out from under her. She knows exactly what kind of picture he’s talking about; he’d sent her a few while he was off working on location on _Defending Jacob_ , before they eventually had a conversation about what kinds of things she actually thought about when she was alone and, conversely, what kind of images didn’t do anything for her. (And it’s not like he’d just sent her an unsolicited dick pic out of the blue, they’d been in the middle of a rather _pleasurable_ phone conversation, and after asking her to send him a couple pictures, which she didn’t hesitate to do, he’d tried to return the favor. She decided it wasn’t the right time to tell him that wasn’t really her thing. Apparently he’d never bothered to delete the pictures.) 

“I, oh god, Chris, sweetie, are you okay?” She can’t even begin to imagine how he’s feeling. She’s had a few instances where friends saw pictures on her phone she hadn’t intended for them to see as she scrolled through her camera roll - nothing explicit, a swimsuit or underwear selfie here and there - and she’s always mortified. But this, god, his stress and anxiety must be through the roof. 

“I, uh, yeah, I think so.” His leg is bouncing again, to the point where he wouldn’t be surprised if she can hear his heel thudding against the floor. “Scott saw it right away, called me. I took it down after less than five minutes. But, you know, it’s the internet, so.”

Her heart cracks. “Chris, sweetie …”

“I am so, so sorry. I just, I don’t know what else to say.”

And then her heart breaks completely, because _he_ sounds so broken. He sounds shattered as he apologizes to her, and she doesn’t even understand why he’s apologizing. “Hey, what are you sorry for?”

“That was for you, for us, it was private, not for the whole fuckin’ world.” And that’s the whole thing, that’s what this is all really about. Because if he’d ever shown himself that way in a movie, it _would_ have been for the whole world, and it would have been his choice, and that would have been fine. But this, this one was for her, was for them. And by putting it out there for the world to see, he’s taken something that should have been theirs alone and made it available for public consumption. It’s not right, and it’s not fair to her.

“Chris, hey, it’s okay.” Her voice is soft, gentle, soothing, and it makes him feel like shit. 

“No,” he almost snaps, and _fuck_ , that’s not right either. He takes a breath and starts over, much softer than before. “No, I just, I feel like I let you down, like I, like I _betrayed_ you, even. That was ours, not everyone else’s. And I didn’t,” his voice cracks and he doesn’t even try to hold back the sob that works its way up from his chest and out through his throat, “I shouldn’t have -”

She finally pushes away from the table and stands, planting her hand on her hip as she does. She can’t believe that her first thought when he said he’d fucked up was that there was even the slightest chance that he might have cheated on her, not when he’s beating himself up like this over so much less. Well, not _less_ , exactly, that’s not the right word. Because this is a big deal, or could end up being one, and if nothing else it will result in him taking a lot of shit from a lot of people. But he certainly didn’t do anything to wrong her in any way, and she hates - _hates_ \- that he thinks he did. “Stop. Stop, okay?” God, she hates that she’s not with him. Hates that she can’t reach out and hold his face in her hands, can’t rub her thumbs over those wrinkles in his forehead until she smoothes them away, can’t hold his hand to her chest as she takes deep breaths until his match hers. This is what they do for each other, one of the many things. And while his slip-up really doesn’t bother her, not on her own behalf (and she _certainly_ doesn’t feel betrayed by him), it’s killing her to think about, to _feel_ , what it must be doing to him. “Listen to me. I’m not angry, okay? I’m upset _for_ you, because I can tell it’s bothering you, but I’m not upset _with_ you, okay?”

Chris frowns at his feet. “I, are you sure? You can be mad, I get it.”

“I’m not mad, Chris, I promise. I _promise_ , okay?” He hums, and she guesses that’s the only agreement she’s going to get. “Hey, when did this happen?”

“I don’t,” he shakes his head, clears his throat, “like, 10 minutes ago? I posted it, Scott called, I took it down, freaked out for like two minutes, then called you.”

Okay. She can work with this. She has to work with this, because if she can’t help him through this, doesn't at least _try,_ then she’s not being a true partner for him, not holding up her end of the deal, the way he’s done for her in the past, the way she knows he will again if and when she needs it. She needs to get him out of his head, get him to stop dwelling on his imaginary transgressions against her and start looking forward, looking at where he goes from here. She needs to get him to turn off his anxiety brain and use his solution brain. She pushes in the chair she’d just been sitting in, standing behind it with her hand curled around the backrest, thumb tracing circles over the wood. “Does your mom know? Your sisters?”

God, he hadn’t even thought about that, he’d only been thinking about her. “Maybe? I don’t know if Scott told them or not.”

“Okay,” she nods, even though he can’t see her, “well, you need to tell them, at least your mom. I know it’s awkward, though probably less for you than most, considering the way you guys all talk to each other about pretty much everything. But it has to come from you, at least to your mom.” She knows, based on the way he’d started their conversation, that had been a big concern for him in regards to her. He hadn’t wanted her to find out about it from someone who isn’t him. Lisa, at least, deserves that same consideration. “Then you guys can decide together if she’s going to tell your sisters or if she’s going to make you do it.”

He groans and scrubs his hand over his head before dropping it to the cushion next to him. “Fuck. Yeah. You’re right.” It’s kind of ironic that the most difficult part of sharing something with basically the whole damn world is having to tell people that he did it.

There’s no time for him to dwell on that, though, because she goes on. “And then Mark, so that he’s not blindsided in case this gets associated back to ASP. And _then_ , you’re going to call your publicist, and you’re going to do whatever she tells you to do, yeah?” She wants to make it very, very clear to him that this isn’t about her. It’s not about him trying to placate her or worrying that their relationship is in danger. This is about him, and doing whatever it takes to make sure this isn’t worse than it has to be. Honestly, she doesn’t actually think it’s that bad, though she won’t say that to him right now, because she doesn’t want to give the impression that she’s diminishing or invalidating his feelings. But when it comes down to it, she’s nearly positive that he’s built the kind of reputation for himself that can withstand something like this without any major repercussions. It probably doesn’t feel that way to him right now, though, so it’s her place to help him walk through the steps to _ensure_ that’s the case, that the negative consequences are minimized. 

He groans. “Shit. Yeah. You’re right about that too.”

“Okay,” she says softly, gently. “So I’m going to hang up now so you can go do those things, and then you call me back later, okay?” She refuses to go on until she hears him hum some semblance of agreement on the other end of the line. “But Chris?” He hums again, a question this time. “We’re good, okay? We’re good and I love you and I’ll talk to you later.”

“I love you too, baby.” The words tumble out of him, eager, desperate to be heard. “I, and, you’re sure …” He doesn’t want to ask again if she’s okay, but he needs to hear it.

“We’re good, Chris, I promise.” She speaks to him the same way she speaks to her kids when they come to her with a crisis, scared and desperate for reassurance. “We’re good,” she repeats. “I love you, go take care of what you need to take care of.”

“Okay, yeah. I love you.” It doesn’t matter that he’s already said it, that he’s repeating himself. He needs to say it again. And, maybe a little pathetically, he needs to hear her say it back.

As if she knows exactly what he needs, she makes her voice warm, confident, when she reiterates, “Love you too. Call me later.”

There’s no time to think, because the second she ends the call with Chris, she’s pulling up his brother’s contact and texting him.

  * **_Me: Did you get a screenshot?_**
  * **_Scott: That depends_**



Normally Scott is her favorite sparring partner, so to speak, her favorite person with whom to trade snark and verbal jabs. She’s so not in the mood for that right now it’s ridiculous. Teeth clenched, she types out the quickest, most direct response she can think of.

  * _**Me: On?**_
  * **Scott: How much trouble I'm in if I say yes.**



She rolls her eyes but softens just the tiniest bit, because she guesses that’s kind of fair. She can see why Scott would think she was asking that just to yell at him if he said yes. She wasn’t, though.

  * **_Me: I just need to know exactly what the situation is, and I don't want to add more clicks by looking for it._**



She holds her breath as she waits for the next message. It’s only a second before it comes through, and when it does, as soon as she catches a glimpse at the picture on her screen, she presses the phone to her chest before she can actually look at it properly. This is what she signed up for, she reminds herself. He’s a public figure, one of the _most_ public, and she knew that well when they started dating. Did she expect this exact situation? Well, no, who would? But she survived both the filming and the airing of a mild sex scene. She has to tell herself this is no different. Besides, she adds on for good measure, what if he had the opportunity to be in a great film, Oscar-worthy, but it required him to film a nude scene? Would she ask him not to do it? Of course not. And this isn’t exactly the same as that, she knows, because it wasn’t intentional, wasn’t done by choice, and that does make a difference, because he never _meant_ for the whole world to have access to his dick. But all that means is that it’s even more important for her to support him; it certainly doesn’t give her more reason to be upset about it. And, just like she’d told him, she reminds herself, this isn’t about her. No matter what the rest of the world sees, it doesn’t change anything about what they have. And with that thought screwed tightly into her brain, she pulls the phone away from her chest and taps the picture Scott sent to expand it. 

Oh. Okay. This is, well, it’s not so bad. It takes her a second to even find _the_ picture (she does notice some of the others, and thinks to herself that once this has all blown over they need to have a talk about where exactly he stores all this stupid shit that his friends send him), and once she does she lets out a little sigh of relief. It’s small, and dark, and yeah, once you know what you’re looking at it’s kind of hard to miss, but it’s certainly not what anyone would call a high definition picture. (In fact, she thinks idly to herself, she doesn’t think he ever even sent this particular one to her, and it’s probably because the quality is not nearly as good as the ones he did send.) She’s still studying the tiny square, thinking that she was almost certainly right before about this not being a big threat to his reputation, probably even where ASP is concerned, when the phone vibrates in her hand, making her jump.

  * **_Scott: U ok?_**
  * _**Me: I'm okay.**_
  * _**Scott: Promise?**_
  * _**Her: Pinkie.**_
  * _**Scott: 👍**_
  * _**Scott: Love you**_
  * _**Her: Love you too.**_



  
***


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating change, standard smut disclaimers - outside my comfort zone, something new for me, and as always, if that's not your cup of tea, feel free to walk away now.

She spends the rest of the day as normally as she can manage, goes through her typical Sunday routine of grocery shopping, laundry, just generally trying to prepare for the week. The grading does get pushed to the wayside, her heart and her brain just not in it because she can’t stop thinking about him, wondering how he’s faring, what his mom said, Mark, his publicist. By the time she finally hears from someone in Massachusetts again, it’s well after dinner and she’s already in a tank top and sleep shorts, and it’s not him, it’s Shanna. 

  * **_Shanna: Hey. You okay?_**



Her thumb hovers over the keyboard for a second then she changes her mind and goes to the top of the screen, pressing the call button instead. “Hey,” she says as soon as Chris’s baby sister answers.

“Hey. Seriously. Are you okay?” Shanna sounds truly worried, and She hates that. She hates that any of them are worried about her in the middle of all this. And she knows it’s because, after over a year with Chris, they all care about her, not just as Chris’s girlfriend but as a friend, as another unofficially adopted Evans child, in the case of Lisa. But their concern should be focused on Chris, not her, especially because she can’t help but worry that their concern over her might make him feel even worse. She also can’t help the nugget of anxiety that springs into action, making her question whether they really think she would turn her back on him over something like this.

“I am,” she assures the other woman. “I promise. How’s he? Really?”

“He’s …” Shanna’s voice trails off and she sighs, “worried about you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. He’s worried about people you know, who know about you guys, seeing it. Your friends, co-workers, _students_. Your mom. I mean,” she huffs a little, “he’s not worried about them seeing it exactly, any more than he is anyone else seeing it, but he’s worried about your life being made more difficult because of it.” Fuck. It was bad enough that he was worried about her being upset with him, that he felt like he’d betrayed her somehow. It’s even worse now knowing that he’s compounded his stress by actually thinking about how it might negatively affect her life. She’s not worried about that, at all. Sure, the thought had popped into her head at some point in the day that someone who knows about the two of them might have something smart to say, but she’d quickly reminded herself that very few people on her end have any clue that they are together, and the ones who do love her too much - and are just too decent - to say or do anything hurtful. And even if someone _does_ say something, she’ll deal with it, she’ll stand up for him and for her relationship, because those are the things that matter. Shanna’s voice comes back over the line, snapping her out of her head. “Well, and yeah, okay, I think he’s worried about trying to look your mom in the eye again if she does see it.”

She scoffs. “Trust me, my mom won’t see it. She knows less about Instagram than he does and she’s never been on Twitter either. Unless it gets embedded into a game on Facebook, I think we’re good there.” She thinks she hears Shanna laugh quietly, which makes her smile. “And as far as the rest of it, I’ll be fine. I don’t think anyone will say anything, but if they do, I can handle myself. He doesn’t need to worry about that.” It’s important to her that his family not see her as an added source of stress for him.

“I get it,” Shanna agrees, and she sounds almost exasperated. “And we all said versions of the same thing to him.” She pauses for so long then that She’s considering saying something else, but just before She does, Shanna finally goes on, hesitantly. “I think the biggest thing though is that he’s worried that he hurt you. He almost seems to think of it like he was unfaithful, sharing something intimate and private like that with the whole world and not just you.”

She groans. “I told him,” she stops on a sigh before she says something harsh out of frustration, and when she goes on, her voice is softer. “Is he still there, with you guys?”

“No, he left a little while ago, he should be almost home by now.”

And that makes up her mind. “Okay. I need to go. I really, really appreciate you checking in on me, but I promise you, I’m okay.”

“Okay.” By the tone of her voice, a little resigned, a lot understanding, Shanna has a pretty good idea of what she’s about to do. “We love you, and don’t hesitate to call if you need anything. We’ll still see you in November, right? Nothing’s gotten messed up with travel or your work or anything?” They both know she’s not asking because of work or travel complications, but She appreciates the ruse.

“We’re good. Work’s settled, private flight is arranged, I’ll be there. I love you all too, tell your mom and your sister to stop worrying about me and tell the kids I said hi, and I’ll talk to you later.”

She hangs up without waiting for Shanna to say anything else, knowing they could go back and forth all night if she doesn’t just pull the plug. Her next move has been in the back of her mind all day, just sort of lingering there. The idea had come to her while she was doing laundry, her eyes falling on a pair of navy lace panties in the back of her underwear drawer as she put away the freshly laundered (much less interesting) ones she’d worn over the course of the previous week. She hadn’t been sure at the time that she was going to follow through with it, but she’d pulled the panties out of the drawer anyway and tossed them onto the bed, putting them on under her sleep shorts after her evening shower and making sure that her tank top matched. As she makes her way through the townhouse, picking up her empty wine glass to put it in the dishwasher and turning off the tv and all the lights with one hand, she starts typing out a text message with the other. She’s waited for his call long enough.

  * **_Me: Hey you. I need you to calm down, get out of your head. So the world got a tiny, dark glimpse. I’m NOT mad, because A) I KNOW you didn’t do it on purpose and B) You haven’t been unfaithful or betrayed me or anything ridiculous like that. The rest of the world got a look (barely), but I know things they never will._**



She makes her way up to her bedroom and turns on the lamps on either nightstand, creating a warm, soft glow in the room. She doesn’t turn down the blankets, but she does prop the pillows up a little against the headboard before settling on her back and pressing her head and shoulders into the pillows. Once she’s comfortable, one leg stretched long in front of her and the other foot flat on the mattress, her knee cocked up, she lets her elbows settle into the mattress beside her hips and holds the phone in both hands just over her belly button.

  * **_Me: For example, I know how it looks with my hand wrapped around it, unable to cover more than half at a time, my thumb passing over the head each time I get to the top._**



She can’t help but smirk to herself as she imagines his face when he reads the messages. She _hopes_ they’ll be a way to get through to him, _really_ get through, that he has no reason to feel any guilt on account of her. At the very least, though, she knows it will be a nice distraction for a little while. (She’s starting to find herself distracted, actually, and she shifts the phone into one hand, slipping the other under the hem of her tank top to let her fingers trail over the bare skin of her stomach as she types out the next message.)

  * **_Me: I know how it feels, the weight of it in my palm or on my tongue, or on my stomach when you’re barely hovering over me, kissing me senseless. I know how you get so, so hard, but the skin is soft, like velvet under my fingers or slipping over my lips._**



She thinks for just a second about where she wants to take this next, but since she really only has three options left, and she knows exactly which she wants to end on, it’s not a difficult decision.

  * **_Me: I know how you smell, at the end of the day or first thing in the morning, when the Gucci or the Dior has worn or been sweated off. I know you smell clean, but with a hint of natural musk that’s all you, a little bit spicy, a little bit like the outdoors, like pine, almost.  
  
_**
  * _**Me: I know that scent is strongest when I’m running my tongue around your belly button, breathing you in as my lips follow the hair, the muscles, down until I can get my mouth on you and my only choice is to breathe through my nose.**_



If she’s grown even more distracted, well, who can blame her? Sure, her words are carefully chosen and crafted to create an image, a sensation, that will take over his brain and leave no room for doubts or fears or guilt, but it’s undeniably doing the same to her, making it impossible for her not to imagine herself doing the things she’s describing. Her eyes are closed and her fingers trailing across the waistband of her shorts as she plans out her next message when the phone vibrates in her hand. She’s startled for just a second before she grins at the screen with his smirking face on it and taps the little green icon to answer the call. 

He doesn’t even give her a chance to get out a greeting before he snaps, “Jesus fucking Christ, baby, what are you trying to do to me?”

Instead of answering him, she asks a question of her own, grinning as she says, “Are you home?”

“Just pulled up, I saw your first text a ways back -”

She stills her hand, her fingertips just under her waistband, and cuts him off to say, with no small amount of snark, “You shouldn’t text and drive, Chris.”

“I was at a red light when the first one came through,” he tells her with a quiet snort. “Opened ‘em up again at the next red light but I caught enough of the next one to know I couldn’t keep going if I hoped to be able to drive home without putting my car in a ditch.” He takes a long, audible breath. “And now I’ve been sitting here in my own fuckin’ driveway, gettin’ caught up. So, I repeat, what are you trying to do to me?”

She slips her hand out of her shorts and slides it across her waist to hug herself. All the snark is gone, replaced by gentle, understanding insistence. “I’m trying to make you understand that I, and the state of our relationship, are the last things you need to be worried about right now.”

“Ba-”

“I mean it. I’m _fine_ , Chris. I’m better than fine, _we’re_ better than fine. Because, as I was in the middle of explaining to you, you unintentionally gave the world a not-all-that-clear look, but sight is only one sense, humans have five. And unlike the rest of the world, I get to utilize the other four when it comes to you, _all_ parts of you.”

Chris is almost too overcome to speak. Almost. Because all day long, as he talked to his mom and sisters, when he crawled, proverbially, on his hands and knees to his publicist, when he apologized over and over again to Mark and Joe, there was an undercurrent of _her_. Because his family is important, of course, and his career and ASP are important. But his family isn’t going anywhere. After 39 years, if he’s learned one thing it’s that his family is going to be there for him, even when he’s stupid. They’ll hold him accountable, but they won’t abandon him. And his career, well, if his career can survive a Hollywood debut like _Not Another Teen Movie_ and then him spending half of _What’s Your Number_ practically naked, it can survive this. A Starting Point is a little more touchy, but he’d decided from the jump that the project is more important than he is, and once he decided that he’d step away if that’s what Mark and Joe decided was needed, it had made things a lot easier to handle, given him the perspective he needed. But this is whole new territory with her, and _for_ her, and he hasn’t stopped worrying about her. But now she’s responding like _this_ , and it almost feels too good to be true, if he didn’t know well enough by now to know that’s never actually the case with her. “God, you, I don’t deserve you. But, I mean, you know you don’t have to do this, right?”

“Oh, I know,” she tells him emphatically. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to.” He scoffs, but she knows he loves how assertive she can be when she has her mind set on something. “But I want to do this,” she pauses for a second, grinning to herself and biting her bottom lip when she hears his car door slam. “And there are still two senses left, so may I please continue?”

He groans a little as he makes his way into the house. “Fuck. Yeah, by all means. Go on.” It’s not like he’s forgotten what kind of day he’s had. But he’s also not going to dwell on it just for the sake of doing so. Especially not when she’s trying so hard to make him feel better. What kind of a boyfriend would he be if he didn’t at least try to let her make him feel better, when it's so clearly what she wants to do? He closes the front door and turns and drops his forehead to the wood, waiting for whatever she might say next..

“In that case,” she hums, pretending to consider what she’s going to say next as she starts to trail her fingertips over her skin once again, “I think we’ll go with sound, next.” And speaking of sound, she’s pretty sure she hears him moan, even whine, on the other end of the line. “I’m the only person in the world who gets to hear the sounds you make, the way you sigh when I kiss you or let my fingers dance over your skin, exploring your body,” she starts to explore her own body a little more, her fingers sliding up the center of her body, between her ribs, “the way you moan when you slide into me, filling me, like you were made for it. Only I get to hear the things you whisper in my ear when I’m close - sweet, encouraging, romantic, filthy.” She squirms, her hips moving on the mattress. She really hopes he’s getting as much out of this as she is, because just thinking about being with him, those sounds he makes, the things he says, have wetness pooling between her legs. She slips her hand out of her shirt and pulls the phone away from her ear, switching it to speaker, then reaches to slide her shorts down her legs and kicks them off the side of the bed. “And only I know how when _you_ get close, you go almost silent, how you don’t make any sounds aside from your deep, heavy breaths, then that one low, quiet grunt you have just after you’ve finished, and then your voice, deep and quiet and rough, when you tell me how good you feel and that you love me.” Opening the front-facing camera, she holds the phone out at the same time that she uses her other hand to push the hem of her tank top up around her ribs. As she angles the camera to capture as much of her body as possible (she can’t manage to get both her lacy panties and her face in the image at the same time, her arm’s just not long enough, so she opts for including the panties - he knows her body like the back of his hand, it’s not like he needs to see her face to know it’s her), she brings her other hand up to the scooping neck of her top and pulls it down in the center so that it dips between her breasts. She snaps the picture and shoots it off to him in a text message. “Hey, did your phone just buzz?”

It takes him a second to answer, and when he does his voice is distant, hazy. “What?”

She smirks, her hand drifting down to curl around her breast, thumb brushing over the nipple through the cotton. “I think I heard your phone vibrating.” She didn’t hear anything, and for all she knows, his phone is set to silent, but she needs him to look at his messages.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll look at it later.” The last thing he cares about at the moment is whoever is texting him. The only person he wants to hear from is her, especially when she’s saying things like that, things that conjure up images of her legs around his waist, her nails biting into his back, her head thrown back as he drives into her silky, wet heat. “This is definitely more important than who or whatever that was.”

“Look at it now.”

“Babe -”

“Look now,” she insists. He huffs then it goes quiet for a second, then he groans, low and long and desperate. “There’s one of those sounds no one else gets to hear.” 

“Fuck,” he hisses. He manages to peel himself off the door and heads toward the living room, barely managing to drop his hand to scratch half-heartedly between Dodger’s ears as he goes. “Is this,” he starts, then pulls the phone away from his ear to look at the picture again as he drops onto the couch, “did you just take this?”

“Mmhmm.” Her hand makes its way between her legs, fingers drifting over her center through the lace of her panties. “Surely you didn’t think I could say all the things I’ve been saying, could think about all the ways I’ve gotten to know those things, and not have it affect me. I just thought I’d share the wealth.” She snaps another picture, her thumb pushing aside the lace, fingers slipping past it just long enough to capture the image, but she doesn’t send it just yet.

His mood shifts then, goes dark. “Are you sure you want to do that?” he grumbles. “Apparently mine aren’t exactly the safest hands for that sort of sensitive material.”

She sighs; she thought she’d been making so much progress. “I’m positive. Just like I’m positive that there are no hands safer than yours.” She hears him start to interrupt and goes on a little more quickly. “Because I trust you. You messed up. You were excited and you moved too fast and got careless with your own _sensitive material._ But I don’t believe for a second that would ever happen with mine. Chris, you take care of me, you protect me, unfailingly.” She hadn’t hesitated for a second to send him that picture, she never has. And obviously that’s not the only thing she trusts him with, but in the moment she thinks it’s a pretty good symbol for how much she believes in him. “So yes, I’m sure I want to do this, because I know that you would never, ever let that happen when it comes to me.”

“You know?”

He sounds hesitant, skeptical. She doesn’t. “I know. Because I trust you with my life. And my nudes.” She giggles then, and it camouflages the hitch in her breath as she presses her fingers a little more firmly against the lace of her panties, drawing them in a tight circle around her clit. 

“Smartass,” he answers, and it couldn’t sound less like an insult.

“You love it,” she correctly retorts. “Anyway, speaking of nudes, should I go on?” Not her smoothest segue ever, but she doesn’t think it matters. “I still have one sense left to cover. I think you’re gonna like this one.” It’s incredibly quiet for several seconds, and she guesses he’s going back through all the things she’s already said. Finally, she supplies, “Taste.”

“Fuck,” he hisses, then almost whispers, like he’s speaking more to himself than her, reinforcing what she’d just said, “taste. Can I uh, join you, in what you’re doing there?”

“I would hope so,” she tells him, and as she does she slips her fingers back under the lace at the inside of her thigh, teasing her fingers from the top to the bottom of her slit then back up again.

“Fuck,” he repeats, already putting his phone on speaker and setting it on the arm of the couch and reaching for the fly of his jeans. “Then yeah, continue. Please.”

Her voice is almost dreamy when she says, “The world doesn't get to know how you taste, Chris, but I do.” He lifts his hips to push his jeans down to his legs and palms himself over his underwear. He closes his eyes, concentrating on her words and the breathiness of her voice as she goes on. “I know that there are very slight differences, depending on what part of you I'm getting to taste. I know that your mouth, your lips and your tongue, always taste a little like mint, whether it’s been two minutes or two hours since you last chewed gum. Unless you've been drinking, in which case that taste lingers, just a little.” He reaches into his boxer briefs and takes himself in hand, sliding his hand up and down his length, establishing a moderate rhythm. “My favorite is bourbon, the spice suits you. 

“I know your neck, when I slide my tongue along your pulse, always has just a hint of salt. Not too much, not overbearing, just a hint. Your chest and your stomach always taste clean, with just a whisper of the lotion you put all over your body. It's not enough to be bothersome, just enough to notice. And god, Chris, when I get you in my mouth,” he squeezes his hand involuntarily tighter around himself and lets his hips thrust up into it, “it's the best combination of sweet and salty, the sweat and the heat of your body combined with your scent, spicy and fresh and warm, invading my senses and becoming part of the taste. When you come on my tongue, it's hot and smooth, a little bit bitter, but not in an unpleasant way, and once I've swallowed, a sweet tang lingers for a moment, like I'm trying to hold onto you, just a minute longer.” Eyes squeezed shut, he starts to move his hand faster. It doesn’t come anywhere close to her mouth, but when they’re apart like this, it does help that he gets to do this with her voice in his ear.

“Fuckin Christ, baby,” he gets out through gritted teeth, “please tell me you're actually playing with yourself and that first picture wasn't just a tease.” It’s only a couple seconds before his phone vibrates and he snatches it off the arm of the couch with his free hand. He moans and sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, his hand going still and squeezing right at the base of his dick to keep from losing it, because she’s sent a picture of her hand, thumb pushing her panties aside so that delicate, slender fingers can slip between her folds, right over her clit. He can even see the wetness glistening on her skin. And while he’s studying that one, the phone buzzes again, and he has to hold his breath when he looks at the next picture, which appears to be taken from the vantage point of just between her raised, bent knees and shows those same fingers as they disappear inside her body. When he finds his voice, he chokes out, “Holy hell. God, okay, are you close? Please tell me you're close, cause I've got another minute, maybe two, but that's pushing it.”

“Yes, Chris, so close, thinking about you.” And if he didn’t have photographic proof of what she was doing, her voice would give her away, because just like she knows the way he looks and feels, his scents, his tastes, his sounds, he knows hers. And he knows that whatever words she’s using, that tone, breathy but tight, higher pitched than normal, almost strained, means that she’s only seconds away from cumming. He listens as her breathing picks up and her words are replaced by quiet whines and whimpers, he listens so hard he convinces himself that he can hear her hand moving on and in her body, and he knows the exact gasp that tells him her orgasm is rolling over her. 

True to form, he goes quiet on the other end of the line as he gets close, and she knows he’s gotten off when she hears that grunt, almost a low, gruff sigh of relief. She smiles to herself as she pulls her fingers away from her center and adjusts her panties, resting her hand on top of them once they’re back in place. She turns off speakerphone and presses the phone back to her ear. “So, do you believe me now? About not being upset?”

He huffs out a chuckle through his nose. “You do make a compelling argument.”

“And are you less stressed, at least a little?”

“What's stress?”

Her grin grows. “Good answer. Now,” she says softly, gently, “can you hold onto this feeling for me?”

“This exact feeling? Because that might cause me some problems the next time I go out in public. I've already got one strike in the indecent exposure column.”

“Chris,” she warns. 

“Sorry, you're right.” He tosses the wadded up tissue he’d just wiped up with onto the end table next to him and tugs his underwear back into place before wrestling his jeans back up his legs, not bothering to zip or button them. “No one's going out in public right now.”

“Christopher.” There’s no mistaking the edge to her voice now. 

“I'm sorry, baby,” he sighs, letting his head fall back. “It's just that, joking is better than wallowing, right?”

She takes a second to shake her head at him then says, back to that careful, tender tone, “Sweetie, I really don't think it's that bad. You're practically untouchable.” She hears the beginning of a syllable as he tries to cut in, and she goes on quickly and emphatically. “With the people who _matter,_ you're practically untouchable. You have an impeccable reputation, not even for your work, but for being a real, genuine, good person. Decent people don't go after people like you, don't kick people like you when they're down.” She’s completely honest, completely sincere, so when he laughs a little it takes her by surprise. “What?”

“You sound like Mark.”

“You know, I knew I liked him.” They both laugh at that, and her heart stutters at the sound. It’s the first time she’s heard it today and she floods with a whole different kind of warmth than a few minutes earlier. “I like that sound,” she tells him, “do more of that.” 

“Kinda hard not to, when I've got you.” 

“Hey, it's gonna take a lot more than an accidental dick pic release to get rid of me, mister. You're stuck with me.”

“Well. Thank God for that.” He knew he’d been stressed all day, but he hadn’t realized, somehow, how much he needed this. And not the phone sex, though that part was fuckin’ awesome, but this, this natural give and take between the two of them, the normalcy of it all that allows him to stop worrying that he’s done irrevocable damage to what they have. 

So when she says, “Yeah, you wouldn't be able to make it without me,” he can’t help himself.

“Alright there, cocky,” he deadpans back.

The sudden change in his tone surprises her, but she doesn’t mind it. Not at all. And if that’s a direction he’s ready to go in now, she’ll play along. “Hey, I don’t quite think I'm the _cocky_ one in this relationship.”

“Ohhhh, she's got _jokes,_ ladies and gentlemen.” Even though she can’t see him, he makes a show of widening his eyes and rolling his head in an over-exaggerated figure-eight pattern, the way he would do if he was goofing around with friends or co-stars.

Without missing a beat, she (accurately) shoots back, “You know you love it.”

“Whatever you say,” he answers without wiping the grin from his face. He takes a deep breath then, and says, just to make sure it never goes unsaid, “I do love _you_ , can't even tell ya how much.”

“God Chris, I love you too. More than anything.”

There’s nothing he loves hearing more than that. But, his underwear are sticking to him and it’s getting pretty uncomfortable, and besides that, he’s not really totally finished with his business for the day, as much as he wishes he could end it with her rather than what he’s about to do. Sighing, he tells her, “I'd talk to you all night baby, you know I would, but I need to call my publicist back. Her initial reaction was pretty similar to you and Mark, but she was gonna have her team keep an eye on the internet today, see what people are saying. So I need to check in with her, see if she thinks I need to do anything. And before I do that, I need a shower.” 

He’s prepared for her to be disappointed, or concerned, but she just giggles. “Understood. Do what you need to do. I’m really glad you’re less stressed, less anxious. But, Chris?” He hums as he pushes himself up off the couch and holds his pants up with the hand not holding the phone. “If that changes, if you get anxious or stressed again, or if you just want to talk, call me.” There’s that concern he’d expected. “Whenever. I know how you are about not calling when you think I’m busy, or sleeping, or whatever, but I mean it. If I find out you needed me and didn’t call, I really will be pissed.”

“Be careful what you throw out there baby,” he steps into the bathroom and flips on the light, letting go of his pants and giving them a nudge toward the floor, “after the way this conversation started, I might take this as an invitation for middle-of-the-night phone sex.”

Is it just his imagination, or is her voice huskier than usual when she says, “And who says it’s not?”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, sweetheart.” She laughs again, but it doesn’t sound like a _don’t be ridiculous_ laugh, more like a _try me and see_ laugh. He can’t focus on that right now. He’s got things to deal with. Maybe later though, depending on how his next phone call goes. (He’s not sure if he’s more likely to call her if things go poorly or if they go well.) “Seriously, though, thank you for today, for your support. However this all plays out, knowing that you’re in my corner, even though I still feel like shit for putting you through this and I’m not sure I deserve it, it means everything.”

There’s no more hint of laughter, no more amusement, when she promises, “This is what we do, Chris, we love each other, even when things are rough, _especially_ when things are rough.” She’s never meant anything more in her life. “You’ve got me. I’m here, and that’s not changing unless you want it to.”

“I don’t want you going anywhere.”

Her cheeks flush and she drops her chin to her chest. “Another good answer. I love you, Chris, go get that shower and make that phone call. I’m heading to bed soon, but I’ll keep my phone on.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Good night, sweetheart.”

“Night Chris.”

He pulls the phone away from his head and watches the screen until it flashes to alert him that the call has been ended. As he turns the shower on and finishes stripping out of his clothes while he waits for the water to heat up, a thought works its way to the front of his mind, as if it has just been hanging out in the back of it for a while now. _Even when things are rough,_ he realizes, carries a lot of the same weight, a lot of the same meaning, as _for better or worse_. He can’t say that he dislikes the sound of either.

**Author's Note:**

> Just like Her, I never looked for this image. In fact, I never saw the 'real' one. I DID see plenty of edits on Twitter where people had put other, funny images or emojis over the 'sensitive material,'and it was enough for me to know that her thoughts about it being only a small portion of the whole screenshot are true and to believe that her thoughts about it being dark are true. I put those things together to form the assumption that it was not great quality.


End file.
